Josh Mack blogging at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and occasionally on; bicycles, politics, Brooklyn, parenting, crafts, and good reading. Currently helping to build a new NYC neighborhood news site - nearsay.com, that celebrates the voices that make our city. Subscribe to the daily newsletter it gives you what you need to know.

Of course this being a blog about media and the Internet, I can't help but say that while the "ticker" idea is nice it would have been very easy for them to create a way for people to take the code and cover the my space and the blogosphere with the lyrics to "Impeach The President" or "I'm Living with War" or "America The Beautiful", as not everyone will take the time to look at the source code and figure out how to rip it out.

April 27, 2006

American Express commissioned some neighborhood tours with everybody's favorite NY guide Barry Lewis and Billie Cohen from TimeOut NY. She plays the David Hartman role with fun comments as he lectures and towards the end she talks about places to shop and eat. They seem to be sort of general chats about they neighborhoods and I found them a fun listen. Lewis just loves the city. The audio runs 15 minutes and is filled with neat factoids and I like the fact that it seems to have been recorded outside. I also like the fact that this is not a "tour" with any sort of walk this way or look at this element. They are really neighborhood chats you don't get a real "tour" as in walking block by block. I actually like this. On the iTunes version they've placed a very rudimentary map as the album art. In all they give you a great sense of place. A gmap would have been a great addition.

"What are Jacobsian street characteristics, you ask? She had four: 1. mixed primary uses, 2. short blocks, 3. old buildings (i.e. cheap space, although nowdays, that is hardly the same thing), 4. high density. To this I would add, 5. infill redevelopment."

Tony Snow, the new Press Secretary had some choice things to say about the President before taking his new job.

O'Reilly to launch Craft magazine. (via Kottke) I can't wait to subscribe. It reminds me of an interview with Glenn Reynolds that I read yesterday in an old copy of US New & World Report about do-it-yourself activity. So O'Reilly is going after the readymade crowd, CNET is taking on food. What are the media companies who publish magazines like GoodHousekeeping, Real Simple and Gourmet going to do about this?

April 25, 2006

Jane Jacobs dies at 89. "At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing
slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever
more diversity, density and dynamism — in effect, to crowd people and
activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble." I heard her speak two years ago up at City College about the way cities could become the agricultural hubs of the future. She spoke for hours, literally hours. People were dropping off like flies, at around 10:30 she lost her notes and began to speak extemporaneously. Luckily the host for the night rushed up with his copy and the evening ended about fifteen minutes later. I sat through the whole thing, though my back hurt, thinking "she's 87 so if she can manage so can I" and though it felt like a marathon I was so glad I saw her. I love the joyous jumping jumble she has helped preserve and embrace.

Yesterday OLN (Outdoor Life Network) announced that they are changing their name to Versus. Supposedly they did this because their programming is about competitions, they are the cable network that covers cycling and the Tour De France and the Tour of Georgia. However changing a corporate name to a preposition seems odd. Can they trademark it? They also don't own the URLS (.com, .net, .org) and to add insult to injury someone thinking fast on their feet registered versus.tv on April 6th. This means that during sales calls their reps are going to have to say "Versus versus (insert competitor name)" , and "We here at Versus...". If they expand into restaurants like ESPN has you'll end up saying "I thought we would go to Versus for a drink" It sort of reminds me of the joke going around about Bush not getting President Hu's name.

April 24, 2006

Fred Wilson on why he blogs and how people can subscribe to category specific feeds on his site.

After being named Diary of the Day on Catster, Fez got several more invites to make some cat pals. Some of these included invites from cats that are no longer with us. The rainbow bridge stuff just gets to me every time. It is such a powerful way for people to share the love they have for their deceased pets with others who understand, but even so I don't think Fez needs to join their circle.

I went bike shopping with my wife,over the weekend. We were looking for a starter bike. I was so unimpressed with the combination of racy elements and cheap components. I hadn't realized how Rivendellized I had become in my philosophy. Not only am I excited about the Rivendell cap I just ordered but my friction shifters are staying despite Alex's teasing and his push for me to get STI's.

April 23, 2006

I'm so thrilled to be sharing my house with an Internet star. Fez's diary has been selected as "Diary of the Day" on Catster. She will be featured on the home page all day and already she has received some invites and words of congratulations. What will she do next? As her loyal editor I am in discussions with her about how she should take advantage of the attention. I am pushing her to use the opportunity as a bully pulpit and post something more political, but she thinks she should share a recipe, or post some homilies on how to manipulate your editor.

April 21, 2006

SisterWoman launches. This is a new social networking site for women. They seem to have trademarked the term both the term SisterWoman and Girlfriendships. What an ugly site. I also don't get the tone of their copy. Who is their audience? I like the idea of some of the group stuff they are doing but their UI isn't great. Frankly I was hoping for more when I first read about them. I wonder what the bloggers at blogher will make of this? I feel that I have to make some disclosure here and remind my readers that I work at iVillage but even if I didn't my comments would be the same, huh?!

April 20, 2006

If I lived in SF or were open to any possibility of it then this position at Backfence would be really interesting. But I'm not so just wanted to point it out.

Article in The Gaurdian about blogs and the number of people who have heard the term not translating into readers or bloggers. I'm not sure this really matters as blogs become more and more the structure and elements of sites? Again the whole issue of blogging versus blog software raises it's head.

Very funny comparison of the NYT and NY Post Thursday home sections. Notice the text on the photo of the NY Post cover. When did Lenox Hill become a neighborhood? Is upper Fifth Avenue now called Mt. Sinai? (via curbed)

Getting There, a wonderful article by Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker about; mapping, driving directions, and the Jones Live-Map invented by J.W Jones whose descendants should be very upset that he didn't patent the idea of getting directions from your car while driving.

April 19, 2006

Alan Meckler and Jason Calcanis have an e-mail dialogue about blogging and whether bloggers can make money on the WSJ site. I think this is a public page.

TV Guide launches a community site and blogs. As you know, I get excited about magazine brands but I have to admit I don't think of TV Guide, I'm just the wrong demo. Who buys this now that cable has on-screen guides to upcoming shows? I don't watch that much TV and I shop at the Park Slope COOP which actually doesn't sell any magazines (hmm an opportunity?) I wonder if this will be a real challenge to CNET's tv.com? Let's have an Alexaholic face-off. tv.com by a wide margin right now. (Via Susan Mernit)

I find it a profound shame that Harper's publishes some of the most profound articles and I can't link to them. There is an amazing article about modern pig farming, and also an article ( in the readings section) about eating meat and the rituals of sitting down to dinner,that will make you think twice about scarfing down a burger. While their site was originally a hi-fallutin semantic web experiment it could be so much more.

Mapbuilder.net, a rapid mashup tool for google and yahoo maps. I'm going to make something with this in the next few days, but in the meantime check out this nice birds of Central Park site. Turns out the site and book it accompanies are by Cal Vornberger, who used to run the now defunct Tumble Media, a small interactive agency in NY, he is a very nice guy. Tumble did the kiosks for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

April 18, 2006

Microsoft Get Social - BusinessWeek article about explorations and plans for social search at Microsoft. The article mentions Eurekster as a possible acquisition. I'm a big fan of Eurekster as you can see from my "Swicki" to the right.

BloggingOhio - AOL launches a state blog as part of weblogs. I'm interested in the post tracker on the lower right which notes how many posts each contributor is making. In a related note BackFence is expanding by buying Bayosphere.

PremiumContent is an interest of mine and two things to note here from PaidContent: - Barron's subs are up, WSJ's down. CEO says..."people will pay for valuable content" - Qpass is sold for $275 million. They had rev. of $15 million and 240 employees. I had them in to talk when I was at Hearst but had lost track of them as I'm not working in mobile.

April 17, 2006

Is the Gov't going to offer this logo on a t-shirt at CafePress? Yes, it is another wonderful icon from our designer friends at the Federal Government. This little homeland chicken is on the lookout for the bird-flu in an homage to some WWII preparedness posters. (Not to be too picky but the image is called whyconcernsm.jpg. which is some ways is just fitting. (via Wonkette)

April 11, 2006

Podcasts is Anyone Listening - Is a good abstract of the current podcast listener debate and analysts' predictions of the growth of the podcast audience . Forrester is saying 700,000 households currently listen to podcasts and forecasts that growing to 12.3 million by 2010. At the high end are predictions of 80 million. Now, I love podcasts and am working on an innovative project for them, but it is important to note underneath all of the podmania that this is far less households than currently buy meat products as snacks.

April 10, 2006

I loved SmartMoney's Map of the Market when it appeared several years ago. Like newer sites like newsmap, it gives visualization to information. Now the NYT has their own "tool" to use in multiple ways to do the same information. You can use this tool to track the market and who is performing well. I bet they use this for real estate, politics, sports, all sorts of things going forward.

April 08, 2006

"Fueling sales growth, the low-carb dieting trend has thrusted meat
snacks into the media spotlight. Jerky now appeals to a wider
demographic, including women, children, and health-conscious consumers.
Further, this market has not yet exhausted its growth opportunities as
evidenced by data from the Fall 2004 Simmons National Consumer Survey,
which found that just 39% of households buy meat snacks." That would be over 68,000 of them and, that is a lot of jerky. (via New York Times What's Online column which also has an article about a keyword lawsuit that is very interesting and in fact more important)

April 06, 2006

""There's this gold rush fever about consumer-generated content," he said. "Everybody wants to have consumer-generated content, and Chevy Tahoe doesn't want to be left behind."" And why should they be left behind?. After all it is such a big SUV that it could pull the whole world of preset-content-ready for manipulation along behind it.